Job seekers face pressure to feign AI enthusiasm in interviews

For years, job hunters were told to research the company, prepare a few thoughtful questions, and have a solid answer for “why do you want to work here?”

Now, there’s another question that may be lurking in the interview: How have you used AI in your previous role?

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For some workers, that’s an easy one. They’ve been using ChatGPT, Claude, or other AI tools to write, code, summarize documents, brainstorm ideas, or speed up otherwise tedious tasks.

For others, it’s a more difficult question to answer — especially if they’re not particularly enthusiastic about AI in the first place.

That’s what Business Insider found when it spoke with a handful of college students who said they’ve felt pressure to sound more excited about AI than they actually are. One laid-off software developer put it bluntly: “I have to make up something about what excites me about AI because, frankly, nothing really excites me about AI.”

AI is becoming an increasingly common topic in job interviews

Employers are using AI themselves, including in the hiring process, and they want to know whether the people they hire can use it, too.

LinkedIn’s 2026 research found that 93% of recruiters planned to increase their use of AI during the year, while 66% planned to increase their use of AI for pre-screening interviews. Job seekers are getting in on it, too: 81% of people said they had or planned to use AI in their own job searches.

So if an interviewer asks about AI, the question may be as simple as, “how would you use these tools in this job?”

You don’t have to make your AI experience sound bigger than it is. Think about the things you actually do. Maybe you’ve used AI to get a rough draft started, summarize a long document, come up with ideas, or deal with some mundane task.

How to answer AI questions in an interview without faking it

You don’t have to pretend you’re excited about AI if you’re not — but you probably don’t want to come across as completely unwilling to use it, either.

There’s a fairly easy way to get some real experience before the interview. Joel Ramirez, a career coach and former corporate recruiter, told Moneywise that even a little hands-on practice can give job hunters real experience to talk about.

“Even an hour or two playing around with a free ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini account will give you a more substantive understanding of AI,” he says. He recommends using AI to solve a problem in your own life and turning that experience into a case study you can discuss during an interview.

Maybe you have used it but aren’t entirely sold. Accuracy, privacy, and the possibility of AI changing your job are all genuine concerns for many employees. However, Ramirez says that if the role requires AI, openly voicing strong skepticism could work against you. Instead, he suggests asking the hiring team how AI is actually being used and then deciding whether that’s something you can live with.

Don’t exaggerate your experience, either. If you’ve only used AI a little, say that. An interviewer may ask follow-up questions, and you’ll want to be able to back up what you’ve told them.

“Recruiters are trained to spot generic answers from pragmatic ones,” Ramirez told Moneywise. He also warns against memorizing an AI-generated answer and delivering it like a script. “They often can not answer probing questions since they can only recite what they memorized,” he said.

You should also use the interview to find out how the company uses the technology. Are employees encouraged to use AI? What happens with confidential information? And is AI supposed to help employees do their jobs, or eventually take some of that work away?

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) says employers can use AI to screen resumes and evaluate recorded video interviews, but federal employment discrimination laws still apply when those tools are used.

LinkedIn’s research found that nearly 80% of people feel unprepared to find a job in 2026, while applicants per open role in the U.S. have doubled since spring 2022.